


Reach Out, I'll Be There

by justheretobreakthings



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Aromantic Asexual Keith (Voltron), Gen, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Like it's not even close, Not Canon Compliant, Platonic Relationships, Post-Season/Series 06, Shiro (Voltron) Angst, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Team as Family, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2019-05-29 10:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15070742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justheretobreakthings/pseuds/justheretobreakthings
Summary: After so long trapped in the astral plane, Shiro is finally back in the world of the living, back with his team, his family. But there are downsides to fusing into the body of his clone. Downsides to having to share its memory.When Haggar took over, Keith wasn’t the only one who came out of that fight with scars.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Quick warning: This story is not going to be an ethical discussion about how the Kuron plot was handled. I know a lot of people didn't like how the narrative handled it. I know that I'm going to be taking my own direction with the Shiro-Kuron debacle. And I know that some people aren't going to like how I handle the plot either.
> 
> I'm sorry in advance about that, but I've planned how I'm going to tackle it, and I'm not going to change it. And I'm not going for the most morally-right method of handling that plot point - I'm going for what works best for the story.

_“Shiro, please. You’re my brother. I love you.”_

_The words were feeble, strained, as if it was taking every last ounce of energy, every last ounce of strength, for the figure Shiro was pinning to the floor to get them out. The boy’s breath was coming out as ragged panting, and the violet eyes fixed toward Shiro were desperate, pleading, genuine. Trying with all their strength to get through to him._

_For a moment, it almost did. It was almost enough to get him to crack. Almost._

_But he steeled himself, gritted his teeth and pushed at the sword blocking his way. The tenacity in Keith’s expression wilted, and he flinched away, shutting his eyes against the heat and energy of Shiro’s sword._

_“Just let go, Keith,” Shiro grunted. “You don’t have to fight anymore. By now the team’s already gone. I saw to it myself.” The words were meant to hurt, meant to puncture, and judging by the way Keith grit his teeth and wrenched his eyes even more tightly shut, they seem to have done their job._

_Shiro pressed harder, and there was no way Keith could keep up with the force bearing down on him. He was too weakened, too exhausted, from fighting Shiro this long. He tried, sure, he didn’t let up his defense, but it was useless. His grip on his sword became shakier, feebler, as slowly the glowing blade from Shiro’s hand descended._

_And all too soon, Keith couldn’t fight him off any longer. Shiro felt his lips curl in a grimly satisfied smile as he felt his blade reach the skin of Keith’s neck. The boy’s eyes went wide in horror, his pupils contracting, and steadily from the edge of the blade a deep red began to seep, increasing in its speed as Shiro pressed further, deeper, slicing through the veins in his throat._

_Keith paled, his face growing whiter and whiter in contrast to his neck and torso which were being soaked through with blood, coated in a deep crimson whose bitter odor was like a drug to Shiro. He breathed it in deeply even as his blade kept moving deeper into Keith’s neck._

_Unfocused eyes blinked dazedly up at him, uncomprehending, almost unseeing. Keith had just enough life left in him to move his lips, to mouth, “Shiro,” but no sound came out, and that was the last he moved. His eyes went glassy, and Shiro finally withdrew his own weapon, enjoying the squelch that came with the motion and watching with an idle amusement as the blood that had not yet escaped Keith’s body came flooding out through the gaping wound in his neck, dripping onto the metallic ground beneath them, puddling and flowing until it was soaking into Shiro’s own knees, sticking and staining._

_And it was everywhere, sticking to his back, dripping down his own face, suffocating him with the smell…_

His eyes shot open.

Shiro nearly banged his head onto the wall behind him as he scrambled to sit up and get his bearings, blinking in the darkness of the bedroom, his breaths coming out in gasps. It wasn’t real, it hadn’t been real, he was okay,  _Keith_  was okay.

His arm was shaking as he reached up to wipe the sweat off his face, the sweat that he realized he was coated in. Sweat, not blood. He stank of it, and since there was no bitter iron in the scent, it was the most wonderful thing he had ever smelled.

He took several moments to try to steady himself, calm himself. Nightmares like this one were to be expected. He’d gotten them bad during his time after that Galra prison, and even though they had lessened in frequency and severity over time, they had never gone away. It was a normal response to trauma, he knew, and everything that had happened since he had died – he had  _died,_  and Shiro still had trouble really wrapping his head around that – certainly counted as trauma.

Part of him, the exhausted part, wanted to go back to sleep, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to. For one thing, he was certain that for quite a while yet he would no longer be able to close his eyes without the events of that nightmare playing out like a video reel against his eyelids.

And for another, there was something he needed to check on before he would ever have any hope of being able to relax again.

Shiro rolled out of his bed, kicking away the adrenaline-soaked sheets and comforter that he’d gotten tangled in as he had tossed and turned in his sleep. He set his feet on the bare ground before the cold of it reminded him to grab his slippers instead. Lance had been very vocal in his complaints that he’d gone to all the trouble to grab everyone’s slippers and robes when they had been evacuating the castle, and heads would roll if the other paladins didn’t appreciate it and finally put it to good use. He had even told Shiro that he wouldn’t hesitate to use physical force if that’s what it took to make him enjoy the luxury of hand-tailored slippers.

Now slipper-footed, Shiro got up and slipped out the door of his room into the hallway, where he had to take a moment to orient himself again. It had taken him what felt like an eternity to learn to navigate his way around the castle ship and finally settle into the routine of its living quarters, and now suddenly he was having to get used to the ship Olia had procured the group for their trip back to Earth. It was much smaller, so he figured he’d get lost here much less, but he still had to get used to the narrower hallways and the fact that all the rooms and facilities were in different places than they should have been.

He made his way down the hall, having to stop and press his ear to each doorway since he hadn’t yet committed to memory who was sleeping where. The first room met him with the clacking of computer keys, so that was probably either Pidge or Matt. He could recognize Hunk’s snores easily coming from the next one, and could just make out the sound of Lance’s music player in the one beside that.

He peeked into the first silent room he came across, to find Krolia sleeping soundly, her eyes closed in slumber but her fingers wrapped tightly around the hilt of a dagger lying on the bed beside her. Shiro held his breath as he shut the door as softly as he could; he did not want to find out what happened when someone woke up Krolia unexpectedly.

If Krolia was in this room, then that meant the room right across from hers should be…

Shiro pulled the door ajar and let out a breath of relief. Keith was laid out across the bed, on his side nearest the wall, eyes shut, his body curled around the dozing figure of Kosmo, who was resting with his paws splayed out in front of him and his tail draped over Keith’s legs and one of Keith’s arms wrapped around him. Shiro stood in the doorway and watched for a long moment, reassuring himself that Keith was there, and alive, and safe, his chest slowly rising and falling with calm and heavy breaths as he slept.

Once he was satisfied that Keith truly was okay, Shiro began to back out of the room, but he paused when a tiny sound broke the silence. Keith had let out a little grunt in his sleep, and his brow wrinkled, face pulling into a frown, before he grunted again, at a higher pitch this time. One of his legs slowly started to curl further toward his chest, and the hand of the arm resting across Kosmo twitched, as if he were trying to grab at something.

“Keith?” Shiro whispered. He took a step back into the room, ready to intervene if something was wrong.

Kosmo, however, beat him to it. At Shiro’s whispering voice, the creature had let out a low rumbling sound, almost like a sigh, and slowly lifted his head up. He yawned widely before turning his head to face the arm draped over him, and, after taking a couple of ticks to sniff curiously at Keith’s twitching hand, he closed his eyes and began licking at the back of his hand and wrist.

Eventually the twitching subsided, at least to Kosmo’s satisfaction, and he brought his head back down onto the mattress. He didn’t go back to sleep, though; instead his eyes stayed open, fixed on Shiro in the doorway.

Keith looked to have settled down from whatever it was that had disturbed his sleep, but Shiro still had to be sure. Had to know that Keith was one hundred percent all right before he could leave. Tentatively he took another step into the room, but as he set his foot on the ground, he froze.

Kosmo growled at him.

Shiro blinked down at the wolf. He hadn’t moved, and Shiro hadn’t noticed him baring his teeth but he had definitely growled. And now he was still staring him down, curled protectively beside Keith like he was guarding him from any threat that came his way.

Like he was guarding him from Shiro.

Shiro swallowed and took a step back. “Sorry,” he said softly. “It’s okay, Kosmo, I’m going, see? It’s okay.”

He could see a little glint of teeth this time when Kosmo growled at him again, and Keith squirmed again in his sleep. He rolled away a little and stretched his legs out, then, with a soft, “hm?”, opened his eyes and lifted his head, blinking in the dim light from the doorway. “Shiro?” he said, voice dry from sleep. “’S ‘at you?”

Mentally cursing himself for waking Keith up, Shiro replied in a low voice, “Yeah, it’s me. Go back to sleep.”

“What’re you doin’ here?” Keith mumbled. He sat up further and stretched his arm out along the edge of the bed, reaching for something on the floor.

“Just – just making rounds,” Shiro answered. “Making sure everyone’s gotten to sleep okay.”

“Mmm,” Keith grunted. “Y’should be sleepin’ too.”

“Yeah. I probably should.”

Keith finally found he object his hand had been scrabbling for, his communications tablet, and he powered it on to turn on the flashlight at the front of the device. He squinted against the light as it partly illuminated the room, but he looked Shiro up and down even as his eyes adjusted. “Shiro? You okay?”

“Yeah, course I am,” Shiro said.

“You look… sick.”

“Nah, just tired.”

Keith frowned, narrowing his eyes, and Shiro couldn’t help himself from looking away, dropping his gaze to look at the fuzzy faces of his lion slippers instead of at Keith. “You sure?” Keith asked.

“I’m sure.”

“You, uh, don’t have, uh – nothing’s bothering you or anything?”

“No, I – ” Shiro looked back up at Keith, and wished he hadn’t. At the angle Keith was holding his tablet, the flashlight was illuminating his face perfectly, casting shadows along the angles of his face but throwing half of it into light, including the right side of his face. The side where a thick, pinkish-brown gash sliced through, just as lurid now as it had been on the day he’d first received it.

_The day Shiro had first given it to him. The day he’d thrown him to the ground and towered over him with his hand in the form of a bright glowing sword, striking at Keith, aiming for a killing blow, hearing the hiss as the edge of his sword seared through the skin on his face and he had enjoyed the sound like it was music._

“ – I’m fine,” he finished, choking the words out and hoping Keith was still too sleep-addled to catch how much of a strain it was. “Little bout of insomnia, I guess. Might see if Coran has anything that’ll help.”

Keith nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea.” He yawned and settled back into his former position on the bed, and Kosmo wriggled into place at his side and strecthed his paws out again. “Well, uh, good night, then.”

“Right. You too. And good night, Kosmo,” he added. Kosmo just growled again, softer than he had before, but still a growl. Shiro grimaced. “He doesn’t like me much, does he?” he asked.

Keith reached a hand up to scratch Kosmo behind the ear, and he thumped his tail against his leg to show his appreciation. “He just has to get used to you still,” he said. “Maybe you could give him some table scraps tomorrow or something. It worked for Hunk.”

“I’ll, um, give it a try,” Shiro said, giving Wolf a nod goodbye as he stared after him. “Night, Keith.” He ducked out of the room as Keith mumbled a good night in reply.

He returned to his room, kicking off his lion slippers and climbing back onto his bed, where he lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling. He was exhausted, and would have liked nothing more than to finish out his night of sleep, but he didn’t. He steadfastly refused. Occasionally his eyes would start to drift shut again, his body begging him to rest, but whenever they shut fully and he let himself relax, it would only be moments before they shot back open again and Shiro was painfully awake.

He couldn’t go back to sleep, as much as he wanted to, as much as he needed it. Because every time he closed his eyes, he was back in that facility, railings and beams and pods crashing down around him as he raced through, bearing down on his little brother, his glowing hand ready to hurt, ready to kill.

Every time he closed his eyes, he was Kuron again.


	2. Chapter 2

“Okay,” Matt said as he finished hooking the device up to the stump of Shiro’s arm. “Now, see if you can bend the index finger.”

Shiro glanced down at the ‘hand’, or at least the vaguely hand-shaped bundle of wires on the table beside him. Pidge and Matt weren’t planning to add an exoskeleton to their prosthetic until they got the mechanisms working, so at the moment, it simply looked like Shiro had a mass of strings and wires and metal joints pouring out of his shoulder.

He concentrated hard on trying to remember how bending a finger was supposed to feel, willing it to move. It did, after a second’s delay, but Shiro couldn’t feel any sensation in the digit as he curled and uncurled it again.

“How’d that feel?” Pidge asked, ducking into his line of sight to read his expression.

“It didn’t,” Shiro answered.

Pidge frowned, and Matt let out a sigh. “Sorry about that, man. Turns out arms and hands are complicated as fuck. Props to the evil wizards for building one that functioned as well as your old one did.”

“Yeah, well.” Shiro shrugged, not wanting to dwell too long on thoughts of his old prosthetic. Sure, it had worked so well that it had almost felt like having a real arm again, but it also did so much more than that, so much that he definitely did not want to see repeated. He would take no arm over an arm that could turn against him any day of the week. “Not your fault. You’re trained to work with computers, not bodies.”

“Sure, but what is a body but a meaty, blood-filled computer?”

“Ew,” Pidge said, making a face. “That doesn’t make for a great mental picture, Matt.”

“Well, am I wrong? I mean, it’s all just electrical impulses controlling everything in there. I’ve built robots before; building a working limb should really just be robot-making: expert mode. See if you can move the other fingers, would you, Shiro?”

Shiro complied, watching the little mechanical fingers as they bent and unbent with a tiny electrical hum. He tested the middle finger, the ring finger, and the pinky, all successful in that they moved, but the thumb remained still when he tried to move it.

“Damn it,” Matt muttered. “Median nerve must not be connecting to the thumb properly.”

“Thumbs are weird, I couldn’t hook it up the same way I did the other fingers,” Pidge said. “I tried another way, but those fibers are just so goddamn tiny, I can’t see if I missed something or if something’s blocking off the path or anything. Speaking of which, we’ve got to figure out some way to get those neurons traveling faster. The surface electrodes we’ve got now just aren’t cutting it.”

“Would we be able to add some sort of component to the microprocessor to agitate them?”

“Maybe, but it may come at the cost of some of the precision control. And when it comes to nerves - ”

“Right, right. Precision’s key.”

Shiro cleared his throat. “Okay. Well. You two don’t need me around if you’re talking shop; don’t really have anything to contribute.”

“What, you don’t want to stick around and watch a couple of geniuses in action?” Matt said. “There are people who would pay good money for the privilege, you know.”

“People will pay good money for anything. That means nothing.”

“You wound us, Shiro,” Pidge said, putting a hand over her heart. “But fine, run away. Here, let me unhook the arm for you.”

She moved around the table to carefully begin disconnecting the prosthetic from Shiro, her tongue poking out from between her lips in concentration. Matt, meanwhile, hoisted himself up to sit on the table next to the arm, gazing down at it with a thoughtful frown. “In all seriousness, Shiro, sorry the progress has been slow. I don’t even know how long it’ll take to give you a functioning arm, let alone one that’s battle-ready.”

“It’s all right,” Shiro said, lifting his flesh-and-blood hand to wave dismissively. “Whether it works out or not, thanks for trying.”

“We don’t want participation trophies, Shiro,” Pidge huffed. “We’re aiming for bronze at least.”

“Well, sure, but I’m just – “

Shiro paused when a knock sounded at the door to the lab-slash-workshop. “Come in!” Matt called.

The door slid open, and Keith poked his head into the entryway, Wolf sliding her nose in after him, on his heels like always. “Is Pidge in here? I was wondering – ”

He stopped and stared when he finally got a good look at the work being done in the room, at the mess of wires trailing from the stump of Shiro’s arm onto the table. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, you’re – you’re working on the – ” He cut himself off as he bit his lip and looked up at Shiro. Shiro had to fight not to wince; him getting a new prosthetic arm was nothing for anyone to be nervous about, and he was sure that Keith knew that, logically, but still – he could under stand why suddenly seeing a mechanical arm on Shiro again without warning might give him a bit of a jolt. Mentally he urged Pidge to hurry up and get the damn thing unhooked.

“Yeah, working on the arm,” Matt said with a nod. “And learning that Dr. Frankenstein was really under-appreciated. Body-building is hard.”

“Pretty sure the term isn’t ‘body-building’,” Pidge said, rolling her eyes. “You needed me for something?” she asked, looking back over toward Keith.

Keith blinked a couple of times before focusing again and clearing his throat. “Right, yeah. Sorry. I just – I’m helping Hunk work on those new training bots, he said you had the screwdriver set last?”

“Hunk’s having you do fetch quests?” Pidge said.

“I guess,” Keith answered with a shrug. “Do you have them?”

“One minute,” Pidge said. The two of them were silent as Pidge finished with the arm, then, with a nod toward Shiro, she strode toward the door. “They’re in my room somewhere,” she said. “We’ll just have to look for them. Probably just buried under something.”

“How is it that you’ve already managed to destroy your room that much?” Keith asked as she joined him in the hall. The door slit shut again before they could hear her reply.

Matt didn’t waste a second before turning back to Shiro. “So. You and Keith. Let’s talk.”

Shiro blinked up at him in surprise. “Talk? About what?”

“Come on, man, we’ve all noticed it. For one thing, you didn’t say a word to him just now.”

“He was busy,” Shiro said.

“You’ve been refusing to sit next to him at meals.”

“No I haven’t, the seats next to him are just always taken.”

“I saw you bump into his arm in the hallway a couple days ago and you looked like you’d just seen a ghost.”

“I just didn’t know he was there, I was surprised.”

“And of course the one time Hunk talks Keith into joining a Monsters and Mana game, you suddenly were exhausted and needed to nap.”

“I was literally dead for months, it’s hard to adjust.”

Matt sighed and slid off of the table to stand on the floor and cross his arms. “Look, Shiro, I know you’re avoiding Keith. Keith might be avoiding you too, it’s hard to tell, but I’ve definitely noticed it on your end. And it’s – I dunno, maybe it’s just one big brother to another, but it’s kinda been weirding me out a bit.”

“How so?” Shiro asked with a frown.

“It’s just – it’s not  _you,_  you know? Back at the Garrison that kid would tag along with you like – like the magic space wolf does with him now. And now… I mean, even while I was on that castle-ship with you guys, I thought it was weird, that Keith was in space and you two never so much as spoke to each other.” He grimaced and scratched uncomfortably at the back of his neck. “Of course, I, uh, I realize why that was, now.”

Shamefacedly Shiro dropped his gaze to his lap. He did not want to think about Kuron. He did not want to think about –  _himself,_  really, the him he’d been for a while. The him who had driven Keith to the Blade and had constantly snapped at the others and had been rash and brusque and had known that something wasn’t right, that something was different, but couldn’t figure out what. “What’s your point?” he asked Matt through gritted teeth.

“My point is, just – are, uh, are you feeling okay, Shiro? Are you – are you feeling like yourself?”

Shiro could feel blood physically draining from his face at the question. “What are you saying?”

Matt held up his hands. “No, look, I didn’t mean it like – well, I’m worried about you, dude. We all are. Pidge and I were, uh, we were talking last night, you came up. She, uh, she had thought that maybe whatever’s got you down now might have something to do with, uh, with whatever went down between you and Keith after he went through that wormhole?”

Shiro’s stomach tightened. Neither he nor Keith had divulged to any of the others what exactly had happened in that facility; whenever anyone asked, he would hastily muster up an explanation why now was not a good time to discuss it. He’d witnessed the others ask Keith about it a couple of times, and Keith basically would just pretend he hadn’t heard them. He could understand why the rest of the team would take to talking about it or theorizing. All any of them knew was that Keith had flown into the wormhole in pursuit of a turncoat Shiro, and had returned with Shiro’s one-armed, almost-dead body and a livid burn across his face. They had to fill in what happened in between with guesses and speculation.

He sighed and looked back up at Matt. “I – I hadn’t even realized I’d been – yeah, I guess I’ve been kinda – ” Another sigh. “Look, things are a little weird right now for everyone. I suppose I’m not exempt from that. It’s – it’s nothing. It’s nothing I can’t handle. Things are – I’m fine.”

Matt snorted. “Sure, you’re ‘fine’. Shiro, your hair has gone completely white from stress. You’re not fine.”

“It wasn’t from stress. It was – it was just a side effect of Allura’s healing magic or something.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you need to tell yourself.” Matt tutted softly and shook his head. “I get that I might be overstepping or something here, but, well, just know if you’ve gotta get something off your chest, I’m still just as good a listener now as I was back in our Garrison days.”

“Matt, you were a terrible listener.”

“Well, I haven’t gotten  _worse_ ,” he said through a dry chuckle. “Seriously, though, if there’s anything you need, just let me know. And if, God forbid, there  _is_ something on your mind, then, you know, better to get it out in the open than wait for it to come back and bite you.”

“I’ll, uh, keep the offer in mind,” Shiro said.

“Great,” Matt replied with a nod. He took the arm from the table and slid it toward him. “I’m gonna try and get that thumb working, and we can test it out again later. We’ve gotta figure out a way to strengthen the grip, too. A hand’s no good if it can’t grab onto things.” He took hold of the hand and started bending the fingers inward. “Think we’ll try and master that before we start focusing on fine motor control or anything. If you wear the arm for a longer test after we’ve got the grip figured out, you may have to hold sporks with your whole fist. You know, shovel style. That’ll be fun.”

“Yeah,” Shiro said, watching Matt finagle with the hand. He could detect a phantom sensation as the fingers curled and uncurled, like he could feel his own non-existent fingers doing the same, but numbly, as if his arm had fallen asleep. Matt curled the hand into a sort of C-shape, like it was holding an invisible cup, and he started angling the fingers minutely so that the carbon pseudo-muscles in the digits started to tighten.

They tightened, and squeezed, and they looked hard and unyielding.

_And they were tightening around Keith’s neck, exposed now that his helmet had been knocked off of his head. The wires in the arm sparked as he squeezed, pressing the half-formed fingers into the soft skin, seeing the veins of the neck tighten along with them._

_Keith had brought his own hand up to Shiro’s, fingers scrambling desperately at the mechanical hand, trying to pry them off his throat, but it was futile. Shiro was stronger. Panicked, Keith turned his eyes to Shiro even as he started to pale, and he let out a soft croak that may have been an attempt to talk, may have been a wordless yell; it didn’t matter, as his voice was cut off, strangled, and he was choking in his useless attempts to pull in some air. Shiro only squeezed tighter, watching as Keith’s lips began to take on a tinge of blue and his eyes, still wide, started to lose their awareness. He bared his teeth in a grin._

“Shiro!”

He rapidly shook his head and looked back up from the arm and toward Matt. “Huh?”

“I said, are you okay? You were zoning out or something.”

“Oh. Y-yeah, yeah, I’m fine, I was just – I was just thinking.” He took a deep breath and stood shakily from his seat. “I’m gonna try for a nap, I think. Didn’t get much sleep last night. I’ll, uh, I’ll see you later.”

“You sure you don’t wanna stick around?” Matt asked, raising a worried brow.

“Yeah, I’m sure. I just – I need some peace and quiet.” And with that, Shiro hastened out of the room, not looking back at Matt or at the prosthetic lying innocently on the table.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Season Seven has rendered this fic wildly canon-divergent, but, hey, I already planned it out long before the season dropped. Canon's just gonna have to take a backseat for a bit.

Shiro kept himself busy, distracted. There was plenty to do around the new ship. Coran and Pidge were always working on the ship itself, repairing what was broken, trying to find ways to upgrade and improve what was there. The ship had a long, long way to go before it could hold a candle to the Castle of Lions in terms of tech advancement and pristine maintenance, but they put the work in, and Shiro helped them out whenever he could.

And he would join Hunk in the kitchen to help make meals – although Hunk made sure that Shiro’s help was indirect, like doing the dishes, or simple, like stirring, after Shiro’s first disastrous attempt to cook lunch ended with them having to throw away trays full of what looked like charcoal briquettes. He would go to the lab with Matt to watch him tinker with machines or work on his computer. Lance was keeping everyone’s spirits up with constant recreation, everything from movie nights to trying to create his own board game, and Shiro lent a hand whenever he could, was involved in every activity. Or he would take to the room that had been designated a makeshift training deck due to its spaciousness and relatively soft flooring, taking a leaf out of Keith’s book by training well into the night when it was available, when Keith hadn’t claimed the deck first. Or he would stargaze, or visit with the mice, or read, or sing loudly in the shower.

Anything to fill his time and wear him out enough that when he finally would collapse to sleep, it would hopefully be dreamless.

On the day he decided to spend the afternoon tagging along with Allura, he found himself standing by to watch her in their control room, experimenting with the not-yet-familiar equipment. “Coran’s made a few upgrades,” she told him, “But they’re still not easy to work with. Our range for sending and picking up communication signals is abysmal, and this radar tech here is so inexact. We’re barely better off with it than we would be with just our eyes.”

“Is there something we’re on the lookout for?” Shiro asked.

“Not anything specific, but it’s good to be cautious and keep an eye out on what’s going on near our ship and our course. Speaking of which, I know that some of this sector is Galra-occupied territory, or at least it was based on our latest information about these coordinates.”

“Should we be worried?”

“Mm, probably not?” Allura said slowly. “I don’t think the occupation is active; the planets nearest us on this ring have been all but drained of resources and population, as far as I can tell. And this ship isn’t near as conspicuous as the castle had been, so if some of these spots are in fact occupied, it’s unlikely they’d try to attack or cut us off.”

She was interrupted by a knock at the doorway, and she and Shiro both turned to see Matt standing there. He gave them a little wave when they spotted him. “Oh, Matt,” Allura said, nodding in greeting. “I thought you were planning to be in the lab for a while yet.”

“I am, but I needed to stop in and see Shiro,” Matt said. “Wanted to see if you were up for another test run of the arm. What are you guys up to?”

“Reconnaissance, at the moment,” Shiro answered.

“Well, not really,” Allura said. “Just keeping a general eye out. I think there may be some former Galra bases around here that may be worth popping in to have a look around, but I can’t know for sure. I need a closer read.”

“And this stuff isn’t doing the trick?” Matt asked, gesturing at large to the surrounding screens and machinery.

“The radars on this ship aren’t a fraction as sophisticated as the ones on the castle, and we’ve no BLIP tech to speak of. I think we still would have picked up on some sort of larger defense if there were anything here that was actually a threat to us, but I don’t know whether the bases are in use or abandoned or what have you. If they’re in use but only populated by sentries, they could be useful in helping us get a better picture on how the empire’s doing now.”

“A couple of us could scout ahead, yeah?” Matt asked. “See what sort of activity’s going on, check if it’d be safe to go in? It wouldn’t really be taking us out of the way of our route much, would it?”

Allura nodded. “That’s probably a good idea. I don’t suppose you’d mind, or - ?”

“Well, I was sorta busy with the arm thing…” Matt said slowly.

Shiro cleared his throat. “You know, uh, I actually don’t think I’m feeling physically up to testing the prosthetic again right now, so – so we can save that for later. We can go ahead and scout the place out.”

“Pardon, did you say ‘we’?” Allura asked.

“Yeah, we, me and Matt?”

“Are you, er – are you sure you want to be going out on any missions at the moment?”

“Coran gave me a clean bill of health,” Shiro said with a frown. “And it’s not even a mission, it’s just scouting.”

“Right, right, I know you’re fine physically, but er…”

And suddenly Shiro realized why Allura want him out on any sort of mission yet. The guilty look on Matt’s face confirmed that the fact that his mental state wasn’t exactly at its best at the moment was common knowledge among the ship’s residents. He had a feeling he’d probably been a topic of discussion on occasion while out of earshot. Admittedly, he had been zoning out a lot, even more than he had when first he’d made his escape from the Galra prison, and sleeping very little, and he had been on edge and jumpy ever since waking up in the body of his clone. But he hardly thought that was enough to disqualify him for such a simple recon mission.

Matt spoke up before Shiro got lost in his thoughts. “You know, I could just take this one with Pidge. Easier to scout with the lion that has cloaking abilities, and we really don’t need more than one to do some quick scouting. Guess you got out of running an errand this time, didn’t you Shiro?” He grinned up at him.

Slowly Shiro nodded. “Yeah, I – I guess I’ll… I’ll take the next one, then?”

“Sure. Next one.”

“Great.”

The three one them stood in palpably awkward silence before Matt cleared his throat and said he’d go get Pidge and head out, then ducked out of the control room. Allura turned to Shiro, and opened her mouth to say something, but was cut off when Shiro said, “You know, I think I’m gonna leave you in charge of this stuff for now. Gonna go… hit the training deck or something.”

“Of course, of course,” Allura replied. “Um, have fun?”

“Will do,” Shiro said, nodding his goodbye before he left.

His plan to train was cut short, though, when he arrived at the training deck only to find it already occupied. Keith was there, with wasn’t exactly a surprise, although he wasn’t alone, which was more unusual. Krolia and Romelle were there as well, all of them in their day clothes rather than armor, and Keith had his bayard at its lowest training level of sharpness as he sparred against Romelle, taking easy, slow, deliberate swings at her while she clumsily blocked.

Krolia who had been watching at the sideline, clicked her tongue and went to the middle of the deck with the others, who both paused in what they were doing so Krolia could mutter instructions to Romelle as the repositioned her elbows and Romelle looked down to carefully place her feet.

Shiro found himself leaning against the side of the doorway, watching the way Krolia adjusted Romelle’s grip on the sword where her blade met Keith’s, and as Keith swung his blade in a wide arc, much slower than his normal fighting speed so she could bring her own sword up to meet and block it.

“Like that?” she asked.

Krolia shook her head and turned Romelle’s wrist. “You’ll want to block with the flat of the blade, not the edge.”

“What happens if I block with the edge?”

“You’ll ruin the sword pretty quick,” Keith answered. “And possibly die.”

“Oh.” She frowned, then nodded. “All right, let me try it again, I think I can – oh, hello Shiro!” she called suddenly, smiling and waving with the hand not holding her sword.

Keith used the opportunity to knock his sword into the hilt of hers, sending her blade clattering to the ground. “You let your guard down,” he said.

Romelle huffed. “Shiro’s here, I had to say hello.”

“When you’re in a fight – ”

“Yes, yes, I can’t get distracted,” Romelle said, rolling her eyes. “I realize that. I know how to fight, Keith, just not how to swordfight.” She smiled over at Shiro. “Krolia told me she would teach me how to fight with a sword, and we’re finally getting the time for it.”

“That’s great to hear,” Shiro said with a nod. “Keith’s helping, I guess?”

“Sort of,” Romelle answered. “He’s a good opponent for practicing. Dreadful teacher, though. It’s a good thing Krolia’s here to be in charge.”

“Hey!” Keith said, face falling into a scowl. “What’s wrong with my teaching style?”

“The fact that you don’t have one, for one thing,” Romelle said with a shrug. “You should have heard him trying to give pointers earlier,” she said to Shiro. “He says ‘hold your sword like this’, and I hold it the way he said to, and he just goes, ‘No, like  _this_ ’ and he still has yet to tell me what the quizzack I was actually doing wrong.”

“I – I’m not built for teaching,” Keith mumbled.

“Not everyone is,” Krolia said.

“You’d think I might have inherited it from you,” Keith sighed. “Or at least picked it up from Shiro at some point along the line.”

“Oh, come now,” Romelle said. “I’d think training to be a paladin, you’d have higher priorities to worry about than closely studying Shiro’s teaching method.”

“Well, I, ah, I was actually thinking of before Voltron. We’ve – we’ve had, he’s been, um, in that position for me, for a while.”

“Oh, that’s right! You two are brothers, aren’t you?”

Keith and Shiro glanced toward each other, and Shiro let out a hesitant laugh. “Well, um, not literally, but we, uh – we sort of, uh, think of each other as…” He trailed off uncertainly. He and Keith hadn’t been spending much time together as of late, certainly not as much as they normally would, as brothers should, and the last time Keith had referred to Shiro as his ‘brother’ had been… had been right before Shiro had told Keith to give up and then given him that scar.

“We’re, uh, brothers by choice, I guess you could say,” Keith finished for him.

“Do you swordfight too, Shiro?” Romelle asked.

“A little bit,” Shiro answered. “But Keith’s the master swordman of the group. I dabble in a lot of difference weapons.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Keith said. “Shiro can hold his own in a swordfight with the best of them.”

“Well, I can live through them, but hand-to-hand’s my specialty.”

“Still,” Romelle said, “Whatever the fighting style, you’re the only paladin I haven’t gotten to see fight yet. Krolia said it’s good to familiarize yourself with lots of different opponents and styles, right, Krolia?” Krolia nodded. “Right. And everyone else has let me watch them train. In fact, Lance didn’t even want me to leave. I think he quite likes having an audience.”

“Yeah, sounds like Lance,” Keith grunted. “But now’s probably not a good - ”

“Anyway, I want to be able to see you as well,” Romelle continued, cutting Keith off. “The other paladins said you’re quite remarkable in combat.”

Shiro pursed his lips before tightly replying, “I’m not bad.”

“And Coran said you used to be some sort of fighting champion or – ”

“Don’t call me that,” Shiro snapped.

Romelle blinked owlishly at the sudden venom in his voice. “Oh. Sorry.”

Shiro sighed. “No, you’re – you’re fine, you didn’t – just, I don’t think I’m really in the best shape to be fighting right now anyway. What with the arm and all.”

“That’s fine,” Keith said hastily. “You don’t have to do anything right now.”

“You don’t need both arms to swordfight,” Krolia pointed out. “If you two want to – ”

“He said he doesn’t want to fight,” Keith said, face grim. “So let’s drop it, okay?”

With a frown, Shiro looked over at Keith, but Keith was looking away from him, gaze down at the sword swinging idly in his hand. His hair half-hid his face that way, but Shiro could still catch the new and strained glower on Keith’s face.

Shiro had been avoiding training with Keith ever since they’d started their trip on this ship. It seemed Keith was just as content not training with Shiro.

He could take a guess as to why that left a bit of a sting, but he really couldn’t blame Keith at all.

“Well,” Romelle said. “I’m still going to train. If you want to join in at any point, there’s an extra practice sword.” She nodded toward where the aforementioned sword was leaning up against the wall next to a small stack of water pouches and Keith’s folded jacket.

“I’ll keep the offer in mind,” Shiro said, “But I think for now I’ll, uh, I’ll just watch.”

“Suit yourself,” Romelle said with a shrug before turning back to Keith. “All right, come at me again, I’ll get that block right this time.”

Keith obliged, and Shiro watched him carefully from where he stood. He looked so calm, compared to how he usually was when he fought. It was strange to watch Keith take it easy on a beginner rather than fight with all he had, eyes burning, laser-focused and breathing hard and moving gracefully and throwing all he had into his every motion.

He’d last seen Keith fight like that under such horrible circumstances, but a part of him wanted to see Keith fighting like that instead. If he had taken Romelle up on her request, had given a demonstration, then he would have gotten to see it again, gotten to see Keith light up with enthusiasm and give it his all.

The practice sword sat right there in easy reach, and it would be so simple to grab it, to get into position,

_To bring it swinging toward Keith, the boy’s own bayard up in defense, meeting every swing of Shiro’s sword with a parry of his own, his footwork steady and well-practiced. He was precise in his movements, and fast, the blade in his hand practically a blur._

_He was good, no doubt about that. But Shiro was better. You don’t get to be the Champion of the Arena by being second-best._

_And besides, Keith wasn’t attacking. He was on the defense, all blocks and parries and dodges. He wasn’t trying to hurt Shiro, at the very least not on purpose, nothing beyond anything he couldn’t help but inflict in self-defense. And no doubt he thought that Shiro would do the same, that this was just a mistake and Shiro would come to his senses soon, that he wouldn’t really try to kill him._

_That was his mistake. That was what kept him from keeping his guard up as well as he should have, what gave Shiro that opening to knock his bayard away and, before giving Keith a chance to collect himself, to run him through._

_Keith let out a choked-off gasp as the sword punctured him, right into the middle of his chest and as easily as if the flesh were made out of paper, and with enough force that the blade skewered him straight through and came jabbing out through his back, the metal of the blade shiny and slick with the fresh red coat of blood dripping from it, and the crimson was blossoming out from where the sword had entered his chest, right where Shiro held the hilt in his white-knuckled left hand._

_Keith’s eyes were wide and disbelieving, and a rivulet of blood began to seep from the corner of his mouth. Shiro twisted the sword, turned the hilt in his hand, and he could feel and hear the blade scraping and tearing at the viscera inside him, and Keith’s eyes widened further as, with a strained gurgle, more blood bubbled over and dribbled past his lips from where the deep scarlet was pooling in his mouth._

_And he could hear the crowd in the arena as if through a fog in his head, their applause and their chants of his misbegotten moniker echoing in his head and all around him as he balanced Keith’s dead weight on the blade and lifted sword so that his feet dangled an inch off the ground, holding his kill aloft like a trophy for all the eyes around them to see, to cheer._

He didn’t even know he had left the training room. He just knew that he had to get out of there, had to stop watching Keith with that sword, and his feet seemed to have figured that out before the rest of him had since they were already hurrying him down the hall of the ship. He found himself in the communal bathroom, and for a moment had to debate whether or not he needed to lean over the toilet and retch, before deciding that, no, he just needed the sink, just needed to splash some cold water on his face and catch his breath and stop shaking maybe see if his face would go back to some other color besides paper-white.

That had come out of nowhere. He’d been seeing things lately, he knew, finding himself thrown unceremoniously back to that facility where he had fought Keith before he could pull himself out of his own head, but that – that was new. Well, not new, exactly. A new combination. He hadn’t flashed back to the arena in a long time, and now, what was going on, was he regressing? Was he going to have to deal with  _both_  sets of nightmare visions now?

He didn’t think he could handle this.

A soft knocking came at the bathroom door. “Shiro?” a voice called. “Are – are you all right?”

Keith. Keith must have followed him out of the training deck. God, he didn’t want to see Keith right now, he couldn’t.

“I’m fine,” he called in answer, hoping that his tone sounded as fine as he claimed he was.

“You, uh, you ran out of the training deck pretty quick and – ”

“I know, I know, I – I think I – something I ate.”

“Are you – ?” The door started opening, and Shiro wrenched his eyes shut.

“I’m fine,” he said again. “I’m just… tired.”

“Shiro,” Keith said tentatively. “I know that lie better than anyone.”

“Yeah. Yeah, maybe I – I need to lie down for a bit,” he said, straightening up. His eyes opened, and he turned to leave, ignoring the worried expression following him as he shoved past the other –  _his opponent_ – Keith –  _his prey_  – his brother, Keith, who he would never want to hurt –  _never?_ – and hurried toward his room.

Keith, fortunately, seemed to have elected to give Shiro some space before confronting him again, and Shiro wasn’t sure whether or not to be grateful for that. Either way, he stayed in his room, lost in his thoughts.

One thought made itself prominent above all the others: he had to fix this, face this, whatever this was.

He only moved to leave vargas later when he heard footsteps in the hall that stopped when they crossed past the door of what he now knew to be Matt’s room. He and Pidge must have finished their scouting.

Shiro waited numbly, giving time for any other footsteps that may follow to be on their way, and when none came, he stepped out into the empty hall and crossed to Matt’s room. He rapped cautiously against the metal door with his knuckles. “Matt?” he called. “You in there?”

“Yeah, just a sec!” Matt called back. There was a shuffling sound behind the door before it slid open and Matt stepped into the entryway. He must have just been finishing changing back out of his protective gear and into his day clothes, since he was still tugging his shirt down over him when the door opened. “Shiro?” he said, frowning as he patted the shirt down into place. “You okay?”

Shiro took a deep breath. “Not – not really,” he admitted, scratching at the back of his neck. “You said a couple days back that if I needed to talk to someone, I could, uh, I could come to you?” Matt nodded. “Well, I – I think I need to talk.”

Matt stepped aside without hesitation. “Yeah, I think you do too. Come on in.”


	4. Chapter 4

When Shiro and Matt had been students together at the Galaxy Garrison, Shiro used to be horrified by the state of Matt’s dorm. He had wondered, often out loud, how Matt managed to even survive in such a mess, let alone be academically successful and be trusted not to reduce a space shuttle to a mess of disorganization.

By this point, though, after seeing Pidge’s room, he realized that Matt’s had been an absolute sanctuary of neatness and cleanliness in comparison.

He had nothing but pity for Sam and Colleen.

Matt still had to clear a space on his bed in order to let Shiro sit down, but there wasn’t nearly as much junk on top of it as would be expected in Pidge’s room. The only thing that really held him up was when he pulled the cover up and started shaking the sheets.

“Matt?” Shiro said.

“Just making sure you don’t squash Harold,” Matt grunted as he shook the sheet.

“Who is – ?” Shiro began, but his question was answered when a lump of pink fuzz plopped out of the sheets, then got up and turned curious eyes to Shiro, the markings on its cheeks lighting up and blinking. “Is that one of Pidge’s caterpillars?”

“Yeah,” Matt said, reaching out to scratch the creature’s head with his pointer finger as it floated up to his shoulder height. “Pidge thought I might like to keep one of them around as a companion. He’s a pretty good roommate, once you get used to a floating furball drifting around while you work. Except I dropped a bit of one of Hunk’s cookies in my bed once, and now Harold keeps burying himself under the sheets waiting for more. Little idiot.”

He put the sheets and covers back and patted the bed, inviting Shiro to take a seat, while he himself climbed up onto the desk in the corner to sit cross-legged on its surface. “He’s low-maintenance too. Pidge loves bringing that up whenever Lance starts going into all the work Kaltenecker takes. And now we’re basically a zoo around here, aren’t we? What with Keith and his wolf.” He dropped his smile and scratched at the back of his neck. “Ah, speaking of whom…”

Shiro sighed and sank onto the bed. “Right. Guess you figured out why I… why I needed to… talk.”

“Mm-hm,” Matt said with a nod. “Although, uh, not too long ago you said you didn’t wanna, so, like, uh, what changed?”

“It’s, uh… I had…” Shiro trailed off for a long minute before he took a deep breath and said, “So, do you remember the arena? The gladiator arena the Galra had for the prisoners?”

“Yeah,” Matt said. His tone was low and flat. “Not the sort of thing a guy forgets about overnight.”

“…Right.” No doubt Matt hadn’t meant anything malicious by that. His clone hadn't been particularly chatty with anyone on the team, and Shiro had never touched on his or Matt’s times as Galra prisoners in the time that he had been back. Of course Matt didn’t know about Shiro’s amnesia. And of course Matt didn’t have any of his own; Matt Holt was the very picture of well-adjusted, healthy coping.

Although…

“Do you ever have, like, thoughts about it? About being a prisoner? Not – not thoughts, but like, visions, or – no, not visions, I mean, like flashbacks, or – or nightmares?”

Slowly, Matt nodded. “Yeah. I do. Though they’re pretty much under control at this point. Olia, one of the rebels I worked with a lot, I think she’s some sort of space psychologist or something – that or just got some of the most powerful maternal instinct in the universe. Anyway, she was always really good at working with freed prisoners who joined up with the rebels. That helped a lot. Still get ‘em sometimes, but… not as much. I assume you get ‘em?”

“Yeah,” Shiro said, nodding. “Yeah, I – they were pretty bad, at first, but the more I did with Voltron, the more they started fading away again.”

“So, is… is that what’s changed? You’ve started having the flashbacks again?”

“Um, sort of.”

“Sort of. Well, what’s that have to do with Keith?”

“They’re – ” Shiro hesitated, something catching in his throat before he continued, “They’re not really about the arena anymore.”

“So, what are they about?”

Shiro wanted to answer, but a signal got crossed somewhere and he couldn’t form the words. Silence save for the ever-present hum of the ship reigned in the room for several ticks, until: “Shiro,” Matt said softly. “How did Keith get that scar on his face?”

Shiro’s head shot up and he turned to Matt. The latter didn’t look suspicious, or accusatory, or angry with him. He just looked… tired. “How do you – ?” Shiro started.

“Can’t imagine that anything else would have made things this rocky between the two of you,” Matt said, shrugging. “And I’m assuming that whatever it was that happened, it was bad. Otherwise at least one of you would have given the others an explanation by now.” He sighed and leaned forward, putting his hands on his knees. “Look, you don’t have to tell me if you’re really not ready. But, well…”

“No, I – I should.” Slowly he breathed through his nose, clenching his hand into a fist and slowly unclenching it again as he tried to ground himself. “The Shiro that went through that wormhole wasn’t me, not really, but it – but I still have all its memories. It wasn’t me at the time, but it’s me now. And, God, the whole thing’s so confusing but – ”

“He,” Matt interrupted.

Shiro blinked. “What?”

“Well, it’s just, you, uh…” Matt squirmed where he sat, dropping his gaze. “Well, you were calling the clone-thing ‘it’, when actually, I mean, he was perfectly sentient and everything, and all said and done it seems like he actually thought he was, like, _you_ , you know? Like, Lance was telling me – ”

“Don’t,” Shiro snapped.

“Shiro – ”

“No, just – just don’t. I’m not gonna humanize him – it – whatever, like that.”

“You do realize that up until that last bit, he was – ”

“Yeah, well, that last bit changes things, doesn’t it? It was designed for that last bit, its whole purpose was that last bit, and anything that it was up until then doesn’t undo that.”

“That ‘last bit’ wasn’t even him, Shiro, that was Haggar.”

“The whole thing was Haggar!”

“That doesn’t mean – ”

“Why the hell are you even defending him – it?! _Shit_.” He curled his hand into a fist again and brought it to dig his knuckles into his forehead. “It tried to deliver the universe to Haggar on a platter. It sabotaged the castle and tried to take the team down from inside it. It – it tried – ” He took a shuddering breath. “It tried to kill Keith in cold blood. It beat him around like he was nothing. It taunted him and told him – God, it said awful, awful things to him. I held him down and tried to put a sword through his throat, I – I burned that scar into his face with my own hand…”

Matt’s eyes were round as he stared at Shiro. “… So… so that’s why you’ve been avoiding Keith? Because you’re having flashbacks about that?”

“Yeah. No – partly, yeah, but – ”

“Shiro, are you… scared that you’re going to hurt Keith?”

Shiro lowered his eyes to the floor. “…No,” he said in practically a whisper. “That’s not it.”

“So what is – ?”

“You know, when I ended up with that goddamn clone’s memories, I didn’t just get to remember what I – he – it – did. It’s not like I’m just observing his actions like a video. I – I can remember what it was thinking and – and feeling, and it – God, it – ”

He wanted to bury his face into his hands, but had to make do with only one, shutting his eyes and covering half his face. “It was in its element the whole time. Like, every time it hit Keith, it was so satisfied about it, you know? It – it was so smug about what it had done, and what it was doing, and it loved the thrill of trying to take him down. It would try to slice Keith through with a sword and smile all the while, and when it smelled blood it wanted more, and – and – and it loved it. I was trying to murder Keith, and I was trying to make it hurt and I was so… happy, about it.”

He lowered his hand to lift his eyes to Matt, to gauge his reaction thus far, but his expression gave nothing away. So Shiro continued. “There’s not a whole lot I remember about the time when I was in that Galra prison and that arena and all of that, but… there are some things that have come back. And one of them, I remember, when I wasn’t fighting, when I wasn’t being ‘Champion’, there was a lot of time to just sit around and talk to the other prisoners. And there was one fight, I went up against some terrified, total innocent, probably had never raised a hand against anyone in their life. Wasn’t even a fight, just a showcase, someone I could curb-stomp real quick. And it shook me up like hell for a while.

“Anyway, one of the other prisoners, one who’d been there a long while, he asked me how I was feeling, and I told him, and he said to me that… that’s good. That it was good that I was feeling horrible. Because if I still hate it, if I still get no joy out of hurting other people and taking lives, then I’m still me. This guy had seen other hardened warriors of the arena come and go, and there comes a point where they just stop caring like that. Where they’re just so good at it, and it becomes satisfying to show it off. Or they get some opponent that they _want_ to kill, and they’re glad when it happens. And the moment you start getting some satisfaction out of it, it’s over. You get a taste for blood, and it doesn’t go away. That’s the breaking point, and that’s what the Galra are trying to push the fighters toward. But as long as you don’t cross the line, you’re still you.

“As long as you’re miserable, you’re not a monster.

“And I swore I would never, ever cross that line. And I held out, Matt. For the whole time I was ‘Champion’, I hated every moment in that arena. But then that clone comes along and – and it was _happy_ to hurt Keith, it _wanted_ to see him bleed, and hurt, and _die_ , and now – and now that _thing_ that was hurting Keith and loving it, it’s part of me now. We’re the same person now.

“And whenever I think about – about what happened, there’s… I think about those feelings, and I feel those feelings, and God, I don’t want them there, but they are, and – and – ”

He swallowed down the lump in his throat and took a shaky breath. “I’m not scared that I’m going to hurt Keith… I’m scared that I’m going to enjoy it.”

For a long time both he and Matt were silent. Harold floated over toward Shiro after a dobosh to nudge itself against his cheek, but when the latter didn’t respond to him, he floated away again. Finally Matt took a deep breath and quietly said, “Shiro, those feelings – you know that’s not you, right? That’s Haggar.”

“Matt, look, the actions may have been her doing, but – ”

“No, Shiro, the feelings are her doing too. It wasn’t the clone, and it wasn’t you. It _isn’t_ you. Look, remember when I said that a body is basically just a computer?” Shiro nodded. “Well, that goes tenfold for the brain. If Haggar could control the clone’s actions with his arm, then there’s no reason she couldn’t have controlled his emotions too. Emotions are just like nerves: they’re all electrical impulses and chemicals. She could have triggered parts of your brain – I mean, the clone’s brain – and released all the dopamine and endorphins that she wanted. That’s – that’s an artificial enjoyment, you know? It’s not your fault, or his fault.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Shiro grunted. “Fine, the cause may have been ‘artificial’, but the result is real. And unless you and Pidge want to try your hands at brain surgery…”

Matt sighed. “No. No, I’m not saying… look, I’m not going to pretend that this is okay or easily fixable or anything, because, like, it’s not. It isn’t. It’s super fucked up and not okay. But it’s not your fault. Okay? It’s not your fault that Keith got hurt, and it’s not the clone’s fault that he, uh, he liked it. And – and you’re back in control now. We’re sure of it. You’re in control. It may not… feel like it, but – but you are. And you can get past this.”

“I don’t know if I can, that’s the thing.”

And in a flash Matt was up off of the desk and had his hands on Shiro’s knees, looking him dead in the eye. “You can,” he said. “You can, and you know how I know? Because you’re Shiro, and Shiro didn’t let months fighting in a gladiator arena defeat him, and he’s not gonna let this defeat him either. And because Shiro doesn’t hurt people, and that hasn’t changed, and you don’t have to be scared of that. And because the fact that you feel bad about this and are so worried proves that you don’t want to hurt anyone, and that’s the Shiro I know.

“And… and because the alternative is to go the rest of your life without Keith. Is that what you want?”

“…No.”

Matt sighed, letting go of Shiro’s knees and plopping down onto the bed next to him. “I don’t expect you to just, like, get over this immediately, but you gotta start somewhere, right? So just… I dunno, just keep reminding yourself that it’s not your fault, and you could, like, ease your way back into Keith’s life, right? Like, baby steps. Get comfortable being around him before trying to dive right back in to being Super Big Brother before you’re ready.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that could work.”

“You know, the base complex Pidge and I were scouting out, we confirmed it's empty, and Allura’s planning to send us out in groups to do some more thorough looting of all the bases. Maybe you could try and see if you could team up with Keith, and a couple of the others. So you can work together again but don’t have to work one-on-one right away.”

Shiro nodded. “I’ll ask Allura about that.”

“Cool beans.” Matt stood up and returned to his desk, sitting in his actual chair this time. “You wanna hang out in here for a bit? I’m double-checking some code for Pidge, but you don’t have to join in on that or anything, you can just chill.”

“Sure, I can do that.”

“We can just be two bros, chilling in a bedroom.”

“Matt.”

“Five feet apart ‘cause only one of ‘em’s gay.”

_“Matt!”_

“You know full well I’m never going to settle on a label, don’t pressure me, dude.” He grinned when he caught the ghost of a smile on Shiro’s face. “You laughing at me?”

“Nah,” Shiro said. “Just… thanks. For listening.”

Matt’s smile softened, and he nodded. “Anytime.”


	5. Chapter 5

“As best we can tell, there are no remaining life forces on any of the bases within the complex,” Allura said, swiping her hand over the hologram of the photo footage Pidge and Matt had gathered during their scouting to display for the gathered group. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be on your guard when down there. The chances of any remaining soldiers on any of the bases who may have cloaked themselves against Green’s sensors are slim, to say the least, but there’s still a chance. Additionally, keep your eyes out for any sentries or other security that may still be active.”

She stepped back and let the hologram dissipate, and Keith took over the speaking. “We’re going to split into groups and search the three largest bases that the Holts were able to locate. Be on the lookout for anything that we could use: records, rations, fuel. Light weaponry if you find any.”

“Coran and Krolia will remain here to man the ship while we take the Lions down to the bases,” Allura said. “Shiro, if you want to - ”

“I’m coming down with you guys,” Shiro said firmly. At the hesitant look on Allura’s face, he continued, “This is an easy mission, right? Salvaging won’t exactly take a lot out of me. It’s just the sort of mission I need to get back into the game.”

“Well, if Shiro says he’s ready, he’s ready,” Keith said with a shrug. He wasn’t looking at Shiro, his gaze instead focused on bringing a hologram back up to a map of the base complex. “Group assignments. Pidge said she was picking up a electrical readings at this base here at the far end.” He pointed to a glowing green figure on the map. “Not many, but moreso than any of the other bases. So we’re probably going to be looking at tech salvaging here, and it’s also the most likely to have working security still in place. Pidge and Matt can take this one, and I’ll join to work the Galra tech.”

“This base here,” Allura continued, pointing to another, “Seems to have undergone the most structural damage of the three, which could make navigability inside it a bit of a challenge. So Keith agreed to let his wolf along to that base for teleportation. Hunk, Romelle, since you to are the best besides Keith at working with the wolf, you’ll take this one. That leaves myself, Lance, and Shiro for base number three, over here closest to our current docking point. It’s the largest, so it may end up taking longest. We’ll use this base as our point to reconvene. Coran, maintain the ship’s course on the outskirts here. Any questions?”

Matt raised his hand. “Just one. Can I switch groups?”

Keith and Allura glanced toward each other, brows raised. “Um, why?” Keith asked.

“Well, way I figure it, you don’t really need me for the tech stuff since you’ve already got Pidge, and what if you guys run into something that’s blocked because of damage to the building or something in the way, something that you can’t hack into with programming or Galra DNA? All the other groups have someone around with brute strength; you two need some muscle with you.”

“I have muscles,” Keith said, crossing his arms.

Matt rolled his eyes. “I meant, like,  _muscle_ -muscle.”

“What is that supposed to - ?”

“All right, Matt, that’s fine,” Allura interrupted. “I suppose you could trade places with Hunk or Romelle, if either of you would - ”

“Nah, I don’t think Kosmo’s particularly fond of me,” Matt said. “Tell you what, I’ll just swap with Shiro.”

Keith froze, his eyes slowly drifting over to Shiro for the first time since the group had gathered. Shiro, for his part, stiffened under the younger man’s gaze. “I… uh…” Keith said. He swallowed. “I guess that would - that would be fine. So, uh, Shiro, you go ahead and ride down with Pi- ”

“You ride down with Keith,” Pidge cut him off. “And you two can start exploring the base while I hack into the security network. Sounds good.”

Shiro narrowed his eyes at Pidge. It seemed Matt had recruited his sister into his proposal to try to get Shiro and Keith hanging around each other again. And it wasn’t as if Shiro didn’t want to start making an effort to bridge that space between himself and his brother, or as if he hadn’t agreed to it when Matt had first brought it up, it was just…

He wasn’t sure if he was ready or able.

It would be one thing if this had been a more standard form of post-traumatic stress disorder. It still would have been hell, but at least Shiro would have some idea of how to handle it. He’d been getting better before that battle with Zarkon, acquiring coping strategies and working at getting himself to a better state of mind.

This situation now, though, was far from standard. It was magic gone wrong in his head, his own mind and memories fused with someone who -

No, no, now was not the time to indulge himself in flashbacks. The point was, this was new. He was exploring an uncharted sky and had no idea what might be waiting to come out to greet him from the void.

And he couldn’t help but worry that spending time with Keith again might help draw out whatever may be lurking.

This wasn’t exactly an opportune time to voice concerns like that, though, not when he needed desperately to be getting back into action, back into missions. And for all he knew, it could be completely unfounded paranoia, just his own anxiety holding him back.

So he nodded. “All right,” he said. “Works for me.”

Allura cleared her throat. “Okay then. If we’re all ready to head out?”

The others agreed and the group headed out to the hangar. Shiro had to admit, he missed their old ziplines, and it also was trickier to get all of the Lions out when they all in the same hangar, having to leave in turns. They were extremely fortunate that all five Lions even managed to fit into this ship’s hangar. No one was complaining though; it was no Castle of Lions, but this was still the best and biggest ship that the coalition’s rebel forces could have procured for their trip back to Earth.

Shiro followed Keith into Black’s cockpit and hung back as Keith waited his turn to exit the hangar, and they were silent as they took off, tailing Pidge to the base. Shiro fidgeted where he stood, his arm against the wall of the cockpit for balance. Normally, when he was a passenger in one of the other Lions, he held steady by keeping a grip on the pilot’s chair. This time, though…

He took a deep breath. No doubt Keith had noticed the space he had left between them, and he didn’t know how the other felt about it. He may very well have been relieved; after all, Keith hadn’t exactly been going out of his way to be around Shiro any more than Shiro had him. Then again, Keith had never been the sort to take the initiative in closing distance between himself and another. If he had his walls up, he wasn’t going to knock them down.

That was Shiro’s duty. He’d done it before, when first they’d met and when they’d been reunited after Kerberos. And after everything with the clone… Shiro owed it to him to face down those walls one more time.

So he moved, slowly, to grip the headrest of Keith’s chair, and convinced himself that the stiffening of Keith’s spine when he did so was his imagination. And if it wasn’t, well, Keith had every right to be nervous, to need time, and he’d been jumpy when they’d first met too, it was just how Keith was.

His grip on the chair tightened, and Shiro was uncomfortably aware of just how close he was to Keith’s scarred face, how close his hand was to being able to take Keith by the throat of its own accord before Shiro would even fully realize what was happening, or grab him by a fistful of his hair and slam him into the dashboard, or -

He shoved those thoughts aside. This was his human arm. Haggar was gone. Kuron was gone. He was in control.

He wouldn’t hurt Keith. Would  _never_  hurt Keith.

Kuron was gone.

Shiro mentally repeated that comforting fact to himself all the way to the base, barely bringing himself back to attention when Pidge’s voice came on over the comms to start directing Keith to his docking site and entry point.

Keith made the landing smoothly, as was always to be expected of him, and they followed Pidge’s directions into the compound. “What all should we be on the lookout for?” Keith asked into his comm as he and Shiro started down a hall. Shiro could hear the hum of wiring and airflow and pipes in the walls even through his helmet, or that may have just been his imagination. Nerves tended to surround him with sounds that weren’t there sometimes.

_“I’ll take charge of records once I’ve gotten into the local network,”_  Pidge answered.  _“You and Shiro keep an eye out for fuel sources and scrap metal.”_

“The entire building is metal,” Keith pointed out. “And so is pretty much everything in every base. We can’t salvage all of it.”

_“Right, right, well, look for computer cables if you need specifics. There’s a metal that the Galra use as a conductor in them that would come in handy for - huh.”_

“What is it?” Keith asked. He pressed his hand up to a scanner at a nearby door and he and Shiro glanced inside. An armory, stocked with protective gear in Galra sizes. They moved on.

_“There’s - I cannot believe it. I don’t think there’s a local network.”_

“Huh?”

_“I’m in what_  should  _be a control room,”_  Pidge answered.  _“But there’s no - like, there’s a camera feed going on this monitor, but I think they’re all for cameras that are_ directly wired _to the computer that’s displaying them. Doesn’t look like the signals are being sent to any other location. There another computer here, hang on, let me see if I can_ …  _God, there are so many wires_ …”

“Well, that’s good for getting that metal you wanted, right?” Keith asked. Another door, this one a storeroom that, to his and Shiro’s surprise, was lined with shelves that looked to be containing actual paper files. Keith let out a low whistle. “Damn, this place is… old school.”

_“This one’s not connected to anything either,”_  Pidge said.  _“I guess we figured out why this base complex is abandoned. And why it was out in the middle of nowhere. This place is obsolete as hell. It was probably thrown together as a temporary base and just left to decay when it wasn’t needed any more. And that must have been a hell of a long time ago.”_

“It still held up well,” Shiro commented, knocking a hand against the wall. “Solid.”

_“Yeah. I’m kinda surprised, actually. Considering what a shitty job they did with their tech installation, I wouldn’t have counted on them to do much better with the building itself. You and Shiro just be careful.”_

“I don’t think the building is gonna be coming down any time - ”

_“No, but something’s still powering this place. If it wasn’t, these monitors wouldn’t be working at all. So until we figure out whether the power source is stable, just, you know, don’t turn on any giant machines you find or anything.”_

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Keith grunted.

_“And if there’s any security thing that you guys encounter, you’re gonna have to handle it on your own. Looks like if I’m gonna be hacking any tech in this base, I’ll have to go to each piece individually. Whoever was the head contractor here was a lunatic.”_

“Is it even still worth salvaging here?” Shiro asked. “If everything in this base is such junk…”

_“Yeah, it is, I’ve still gotta figure out the power source and all,”_ Pidge answered. _“And considering that were running low on pretty much everything, Coran would have our heads if we don’t at least make the effort to scrounge up any supplies we can find. You and Shiro keep up your search, I’ll let you know if I find anything.”_

“Right,” Keith said with a nod. He continued leading the way, Shiro following behind him. The next door he opened contained another paper records room, though only half as filled as the one before. Around a corner, then three rooms in a row that appeared to be living quarters. At the end of the hall, Keith opened a door to another storeroom, this one with boxes and bottles and jars. “Think these are rations?” Keith asked, squinting at the label on one of the boxes.

“Maybe,” Shiro said. “But if they are, they probably went bad thousands of years ago.”

“Can’t say that for sure,” Keith muttered. “Most of the rations back in the Castle were still good after ten thousand years. Earth’s pretty behind when it comes to food preservation.”

“I guess,” Shiro said with a shrug. Keith took a bottle down from a shelf and raised his visor to sniff at it, while Shiro lifted his own visor and turned to the shelf beside him to examine its contents. The labels were all in Galra writing, so Shiro couldn’t make heads or tails out of any of them, but he squinted at some of the substances in what transparent containers he could find, trying to decide whether they looked edible.

Keith opened a jar behind him, and Shiro caught a whiff of the contents and was struck by a hint of familiarity. It took a moment for him to place it: Coran had used something with that exact same odor on a bite wound Shiro had gotten from a particular disgusting looking arachnid-slash-amphibian they had come across on a swampy planet.

Maybe everything in this storeroom was medicinal. Shiro turned to tell Keith as much, and he tapped on the younger man’s shoulder to get his attention. The instant his finger brushed against the armor, though, Keith jolted, jumping out of his skin with a strangled yelp and knocking into a shelf, sending its contents rattling and two bottles crashing to the floor.

“Keith?” Shiro said as Keith whipped around. His eyes fell to where Keith’s hand had flown to his hip, where his bayard was holstered, and shakily he took a step back. “Keith?” he repeated, softer this time. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” Keith said, letting his hand fall to his side. “Yeah, I’m - yeah, sorry. You kinda snuck up on me.”

A lump formed in Shiro’s throat. “I didn’t - ” he started, but he was cut off by Pidge’s voice over the comms.  _“Keith? Guys? You okay?”_

“We’re fine,” Keith answered firmly. “How’re things on your end?”

_“Well, I figured out where the power generators were,”_  Pidge said.  _“And I don’t think we should stick around any longer than we need to.”_

“What? Why?”

_“Set-up here isn’t stable, is the long and short of it. Look, basically, whatever they’ve got powering the base hasn’t known what to do with itself since the place was abandoned, and now that we’ve started actively needing power again to open those doors, it’s… let’s call it_ excitable _. I don’t think the wiring here was prepared to hold up this long, and there’s a possibility of a power surge if we’re not careful.”_

Keith sucked in a breath. “Oh. Right, okay. Um, we’ll head out, then.”

_“Got your location up. Think there should be a close exit point just northeast of you, if I recall correctly.”_

“On our way out,” Keith said, stepping past Shiro to exit the room.

“Wait, Keith,” Shiro started. “Really, are you - ?”

“Come on, this way,” Keith said, not even glancing back, just motioning for Shiro to follow.

He did so, biting on his lip as he trailed behind Keith. The first door Keith came to after turning a corner, he pressed his hand to the scanner in the wall beside it. It opened to yet another storeroom. Keith swore beneath his breath. “Pidge, where’s the exit?”

_“I don’t have a map or schematics or anything,”_  Pidge said.  _“It’s somewhere nearby. Be careful, you don’t want to overload the - ”_

“Never mind, I’ll find it,” Keith grunted, moving to the next door. The room it opened to looked to be some sort of office.

_“Keith,”_  Pidge said.  _“I told you earlier, the electricity in this base isn’t stable.”_

“It’s been fine so far, hasn’t it?” Keith asked, moving toward the next door.

_“Yeah, but - ”_

“Keith, what are you doing?” Shiro demanded.

“I’m looking for the exit.” He opened another door to some kind of garage.

_“You can go back the other way to the entry point you came through.”_

“It’s not necessary, I can - ”

“Keith, Pidge told us to be careful with the - ” Shiro started.

“I’m just trying to leave,” Keith grunted. “I know what I’m - ”

_“Keith, just go back to the - ”_

“Keith, stop!” Shiro said firmly, snatching him by the wrist before he could lay his hand on the scanner.

Immediately, immediately, Keith’s face paled, and he froze in Shiro’s grip. He looked up, finally looked at Shiro, and when their eyes met, Keith’s were wide, intense, boring a hole right through Shiro. As if Keith’s wrist had suddenly become white-hot Shiro released his grasp, stumbling back away from him.

He knew it, he knew it had been too soon for them to be off on a mission together again, alone. Keith was scared. Shiro knew that face - that was beyond uncomfortable, that was  _scared_  -

_“Shiro! Keith! You guys need to get moving!”_

Shiro shook his head to clear it. “We - what?”

_“Something’s overheating where you are, you need to move!”_

“Right,” Shiro said. “Right.” He glanced down the hall, then toward the last door Keith had opened. He spotted it then: another glowing scanner, at the opposite end of the room. Pidge had been right, there was an exit over here, just with another room between them. “Keith,” he said, moving toward it and gesturing with his hand. “Keith, come on, this way.”

Keith swallowed. “Yeah. I’m - yeah.” He followed Shiro, slowly, eyes down.

“We’re on our way out, Pidge,” Shiro said into the comm.

_“I don’t see you moving back to the entry point,”_ Pidge remarked.

“Found the exit you’d mentioned,” Shiro said as he strode across the room. He looked back to make sure Keith was following, and was relieved to see him entering the room behind him. “On our way out. We’ll be at Black within a couple of - ”

The blast took him by surprise. One moment he was waiting in the dark garage for Keith to catch up, the next, he was plunged into a blinding white light that threw him off his feet. He was slammed bodily into a wall before the deafening sound of the explosion had even registered in his ears.

Then, as quickly as the world around him had turned to light, it went dark.


	6. Chapter 6

_“ -ro? Keith? Come in, Shiro! Keith, come in!”_

Shiro let out a groan as he slowly opened his eyes, blinking in his dim surroundings. Gray walls, crates stacked against one, a metal bench on the edge of his vision, all of it blurred by dust. The garage, in the abandoned base… that was right… he had been about to leave, and then…

_“Shiro? Was that you?”_

“Yeah,” Shiro grunted. “It’s me, Pidge.” Cautiously he raised himself up, grimacing at a sharp ache in his shoulder and along his side. Must have been where he’d hit the wall.

 _“Oh, thank fuck,”_  Pidge sighed. “ _Thank_  fuck!  _You weren’t answering, and I was trying to - I can’t get to you, that exit only opens from the inside, it was an emergency exit, I think, and the door you came through just now is completely off the radar, I think that must have been what blew, I_ told _you guys the electricity’s not stable, and you went and blew up, and you weren’t answering, and I was freaking the fuck out and - ”_

“Sorry, Pidge,” Shiro said. He tucked his legs under him and slowly pulled himself to his feet, hissing as he straightened. He probably had wound up with a pretty nice little arrangement of bruises. “How long was I out?”

_“Well, not long, wasn’t even a full minute, but it sure as shit felt like about an hour on my end.”_

“Again, sorry.” Shiro turned around, dizzied by the motion, and focused on orienting himself toward the door he had been meaning to exit out of before the blast. There it was, hand scanner still glowing. Instinctively he started to lift his own arm toward it, before remembering that it was no longer there. He couldn’t open that door on his own, he needed - oh shit, where was -

“Keith,” Shiro gasped into his comm. “Keith, is he okay? Where is he?”

 _“He was with you, Shiro,”_  Pidge answered.  _“How the fuck should I know?”_

“I mean, has he - has he responded to you at all yet?” Frantically Shiro looked around the garage, and when he didn’t spot Keith’s red and white armor anywhere, he started back toward the garage’s entrance, back where the rubble and dust and the destroyed contents of the room grew thicker.

Pidge sucked in a breath before responding,  _“No. No, he hasn’t. I don’t know his condition.”_

Shiro gulped, feeling as if he had just swallowed shards of glass. “Right. Okay, I’ll, uh, I’ll see if I can find him. Gotta find Keith…”

_“You okay?”_

“I’m fine. I’m great.” He edged his way past a toppled stack of crates and over a chunk of wall that had been tossed to the floor. “I’m just - I’m real great. Just looking for - ” He paused, and heaved out a sigh of relief when he spotted the familiar colors of Keith’s armor, but the warm relief in his gut immediately chilled when he realized how still it was. “Shit.  _Shit._ ”

 _“Shiro?”_  Pidge gasped.  _“What is it? Did you find - is it Keith?”_

“Yeah, I found him,” Shiro grunted as he hurried over.

_“Is he okay?”_

Shiro didn’t answer, his heart like a drum in his chest as he approached Keith’s unmoving form. No, he thought. No, no, this could not be how Keith died, not on a goddamn  _salvaging mission._

Keith was on his side, face down, one of his splayed-out legs pinned to the ground by an overturned metal table. Shiro grit his teeth as he hauled the table away and shoved the remaining rubble aside before slowly rolling Keith over onto his back.

Keith let out a whimper as he was rolled, and on the one hand, it was a relief, since it meant that he was alive and at least a little bit aware. But on the other hand… oh God, Keith had just  _whimpered_. Keith, whom Shiro had seen try to grin and bear it after breaking bones; if he was whimpering, then he must be hurting  _bad_.

“Keith?” Shiro said softly as he examined the smaller boy’s face through the visor of his helmet. His eyes were open, but barely, only the whites of the eyes visible under the heavy lids, and blood was trickling over one of his ears from a wound that Shiro couldn’t see, probably hidden by his hair.

Shiro began reaching out to remove the helmet and get a better look, but stopped to throw his arm out protectively the instant another blast sounded. The clattering of more of the garage’s contents against the floor rang in Shiro’s ears along with the blast, but this time at least the blow hadn’t been nearby. It sounded like it was a couple of hallways away. “Pidge?” he asked into his comm. “What was that?”

 _“An air unit just went dead,”_  Pidge answered.  _“Must have been what blew just now. Pretty sure some dominoes have been set off, the whole electrical system in this building is on a hair trigger. You need to get the fuck out of there. How’s Keith?”_

“He’s, uh - he’s not great,” Shiro said.

_“But he’s alive?”_

“Yeah. Yeah, he’s alive, at least.” He took a deep breath and tucked his arm under the small of Keith’s back. “Keith?” he said again. “Keith, we have to get out of here. I’m gonna get you out of here, okay? Just hang in there.”

Slowly he began to lift Keith, but he nearly dropped him again in surprise when the latter let out a strangled cry, his eyes blowing wide open. “Sorry!” Shiro said hastily. “I’m sorry, Keith, I don’t know where you’re hurt, I’m just trying to - ”

“Sh’ro?” Keith managed to choke out. His eyes, dazed as they were, managed to land on Shiro’s worried face. “What are - what’re you - ?”

“I’m just trying to help you up, Keith, hang on - ”

Another cry escaped Keith as Shiro tried again to lift. “I know, buddy,” Shiro whispered. “I know, it hurts, just - ”

“Stop,” Keith croaked, one arm snaking around to weakly grasp against Shiro’s. “Stop, please - ”

“Keith, I need to get you up, you’re hurt, just let me - ”

“ _Please,_ Shir’ - Shiro - this isn’t  _you_  - ”

Shiro froze.

Immediately a surge of nausea washed over him. Keith was hurt, he had been knocked in the head, his eyes weren’t focusing. And he was trying to fight against Shiro, tell him to stop, to stop making it worse to stop hurting him. Because he wasn’t seeing Shiro, was he? He wasn't seeing his brother. He was seeing something else, he was delirious, he thought he was  _somewhere else_ and -

Another last, and then Pidge over the comms, shouting at him,  _“Shiro, you have got to get moving! I don’t know how long the base is going to hold out!”_

“I can’t,” Shiro said numbly into mic.

_“What the fuck do you mean, you can’t?”_

“He’s hurt, I can’t - ” His voice broke off as Keith’s whining breaths reached his ears. “Pidge, I can’t move him.”

_“Is his spine injured?”_

“No, I - I don’t think so…”

_“Then why can’t you move him?!”_

“It - it hurts him. It hurts him to move him.”

Pidge huffed into the comms.  _“It’s gonna hurt a hell of a lot more to have a whole building collapse on top of him, Shiro! We don’t really have a choice here!”_

“I can’t, Pidge! Please, you can come meet us in here, you can move him - ”

_“No, I actually can’t, Shiro! Far as I can see, only available door opens from the inside only.”_

“Get the others. Call Hunk up, get Kosmo over here.”

_“We don’t have time for that! Fuck, Shiro - ”_

Yet another blast, and the building rumbled as no doubt part of it somewhere was caving in on itself. Shiro swallowed down the bile in his mouth. Pidge was right. They didn’t have time. He had to get out of there, had to get  _Keith_  out of there, and the only way to do that was through that door. He needed to get Keith there, get his hand on that scanner.

He sure as hell didn’t have to like it, but he had to do it.

So with a deep breath, he turned back to Keith, arm under his back once again, and he tried his damnedest to mentally block out the shout Keith let out, followed by a raspy, “Get off - Shiro - let  _go!”_

“I’m sorry,” Shiro said. “I’m so, so sorry, Keith, I know this hurts, it can’t be helped. I swear, I’m not trying to hurt you.”

Keith breath came out in ragged pants as Shiro adjusted his grip, realizing only just now just how difficult it was going to be to carry Keith across the room with only one arm. Every fiber of him wanting to cradle his little brother to his chest, let him tuck his face into his shoulder, but he couldn’t. He physically couldn’t.

So he tried wrapping his arm all the way around Keith’s torso, squeezing to get a grip and hauling him up, but he froze at the scream that was wrenched from Keith’s throat. “I’m sorry!” Shiro cried, trying to adjust his arm. Keith must have a couple of damaged ribs, Shiro must have jostled them when he’d squeezed, that’s why he had screamed. He started to move his grip to under Keith’s arm, before noticing the awkward angle of his shoulder; it must be out of its socket. “Keith, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I - ”

“Let go!” Keith shouted in return, one leg swinging to uselessly knock against Shiro’s shin, a barely-conscious effort to fight back. “Plea’ - pl-please, Shiro, I know - y’re in there, somewhere, please - ”

_The arm wrapped around Keith wanted to tightened further, wanted to strangle him, wanted to haul him off and hurl him to the ground and stand over him, crush him underfoot while he was too weak to fight back, take the glowing blade extending from his fist and jab downward and finish him off._

“Keith, it’s okay, it’s okay - ” Shiro whispered. “You’re not back there, that’s not what this is - ”

 _“Shiro!”_  Pidge practically screamed.  _“We don’t have time, get out of there, NOW!”_

“I’m trying,” Shiro snarled, hauling Keith back and trying not to pay attention to the way that his manhandling along with Keith’s wriggling efforts to get free elicited more gasps of pain from the boy, and the hand of the crease of Keith’s armor was slowly growing slick against the metal, even through his glove Shiro could feel the warmth of blood. “I’m trying, I am, but it’s hurting him - ”

_It was hurting him, Keith was hurting, and every whine that escaped him was better, more melodious, than the last, and every droplet of blood a beautiful ruby, meant to be admired, savored, he should enjoy this, drink it in, take some joy in the killing -_

“Sh-shiro, stop - ”

_“Shiro!”_

With a roar of determination Shiro tossed Keith over his shoulder, and he knew it had hurt him, there was no way it hadn’t hurt him, but it had to be done, he had to finish this fast, had to get out of here, had to ignore the way Keith struggled uselessly against him and tried to get through to him, to Kuron - Kuron who was dead, Kuron who wasn’t there, it was all in Keith’s head, it was all in Shiro’s head - had to get Keith to the door.

When they reached it Shiro slid Keith off of his shoulder to balance him against his knee in order to hold him up as he used his only hand to take one of Keith’s arms and lift it to the scanner. Keith’s head lolled against his chest, finally having succumbed to the pain and fear and lost consciousness.

Shiro held his breath when the scanner beeped, and thankfully, thankfully, there was no surge, nothing blew, nothing shattered. The door did its duty and opened obediently, and the instant they were through, he collapsed to his knees, Keith’s prone figure slumped against him.

Vaguely he could see that the Green Lion was towering near the exit, and in no time Pidge was rushing toward him, helping lift Keith and shouting instructions that Shiro only half-listened to. They needed to get away from the building, get into Green, Pidge had to pilot so Shiro would be in charge of the first-aid kit, the Black Lion would follow them, they would radio ahead so Coran could get ready with whatever method of injury treatment he could get his hands on.

Shiro went along with her in a daze, finding himself sitting against a wall in Green’s cockpit, Keith laid out across the floor with his head near Shiro, still dead to the world. He groaned when Green lifted off, but otherwise made no sign of awareness.

That was good, Shiro decided as he got to work removing Keith’s helmet, gauze and disinfectant from the Green Lion’s first-aid kit at the ready. That was good, because if Keith came back to consciousness, then the first thing he would see would be Shiro.

And that was the last thing his little brother needed right now. To wake up in pain just to come face-to-face with the one who was hurting him. Again.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Content Warning: needles

Time was meaningless on the journey back to the ship. Shiro felt like he was in a fog, a daze, and it could have been seconds before they made it back, or it could have been hours. Pidge had radioed the moment they were within range and told Coran that Keith was injured and gave him an ETA, but the words to lost to Shiro, drowned out by the rush of blood in his ears.

And that was nothing compared to the blood on Keith, the blood that had stained the armor that Shiro had removed and the blood seeping through the tears in his undersuit, tears that revealed splotches of blackening bruising across his skin. He did the best he could to keep any bleeding under control, but there was only so much he could do with Green’s first aid kit. At least Keith was too out of it to move much, or to jerk away when Shiro applied the disinfectant to the visible wounds. He did tense, though, and let out a small keening, which left Shiro whispering apologies to him over and over until the words became meaningless.

The cockpit lurched a little when Pidge touched down in the hangar, Black following close behind. Shiro had expected Coran to be in the hangar waiting for them when they got back, as even without the med bay around he was the one to go to for first aid, but when Green lowered her jaw to allow them to exit, the pounding footsteps that came hurtling up to the cockpit belonged to Krolia.

Shiro stepped aside hastily when Krolia entered the cockpit hurried over to kneel down on one knee and examine Keith. “Have you been able to assess the full extent of his injuries?” she asked sharply.

“Just - just the exterior wounds,” Shiro said. “I don’t know how much internal damage there is, but I’m pretty sure a couple of ribs are at least fractured. And the head wound, um, I - I don’t know how bad it is. He was conscious earlier, but not exactly lucid.”

Krolia pursed her lips, brows drawn, as she brushed Keith’s bangs aside to get a look for herself. Shiro watched her face, watched the flame in her eyes that was so like Keith’s, although hers had a steeliness and control to them that Keith’s didn’t. At first glance her expression appeared angry, but Shiro knew better than that. Keith was the same way; he was constantly glaring, brow creased, gaze sharp, jaw set, but he was seldom angry. All other negative emotions - worry, grief, fear, stress, frustration - simply disguised themselves as anger to those who didn’t know him well.

And not many people knew him well. For the longest time, Shiro had been the only exception.

Krolia finished her cursory once-over of the injuries quickly, then stood, scooping Keith up into her arms with a surprising gentleness considering the haste of the action and the intensity that seemed to be pouring off of her in waves.

“Coran’s been preparing what medical provisions we have,” she said tonelessly as she marched out of Green’s maw and headed across the hangar, Shiro and Pidge behind, the latter practically having to skip to keep up with Krolia’s long strides. “We radioed Allura’s team to see if she could return to the ship and see what she could manage with her… alchemist powers, I believe Coran called them. She said she’ll try to get back quickly, but it will still be a bit of a wait. For now we just have to get him as stable as possible and do what we can.”

“Right,” Shiro said. “Sounds, um, sounds good.”

“Anything we can do?” Pidge asked.

“I don’t know,” Krolia said. “Coran’s going to be in charge of this whole matter.” Shiro wouldn’t have thought it possible for there to be any more tension in her face than there was already, but she pulled it off, her hands curling protectively around Keith as she pulled him tighter against her. Something told Shiro that Krolia was reluctant to hand off the medical care of her son to someone else.

An ‘infirmary’ of sorts had been set up on the ship in one of the spare cabins where they had been storing their first aid supplies, and they had thus far managed to avoid using it for anything beyond scrapes and bruises. The paladins were being more careful, whether consciously or unconsciously, now that they no longer had a fully-stocked med bay at the ready for them to heal up injuries in a matter of days or even hours. Even the one healing pod they had with them, the one in which Shiro had rested as his consciousness had merged with his new body, could do nothing more than monitor vitals without the Castle and its crystals to power its healing processes.

It was here where they met up with Coran, who had prepared the infirmary’s bed and gotten bowls of water and bandages on standby for wound-cleaning. He was all business when they walked in, hurrying forth to help Krolia lay Keith down on the bed and immediately getting to work removing Keith’s underarmor from his torso. Vaguely Shiro heard Pidge mutter something about it being crowded in here before ducking out, although he didn’t know if that was actually the reason she left the room or if it was more in regards to maintaining Keith’s modesty. It  _was_  rather cramped in the room, to be fair, but Shiro couldn’t bring himself to leave and give the others space. He had to be here to watch. He had to.

Coran got to work steadying Keith’s head and neck and dabbing at the wound that even this much later was still oozing a trickle of blood down Keith’s distressingly pale face. He motioned for Shiro to come take over, instructing him to hold the cloth in place but not apply pressure, before moving along to examine Keith’s shoulder. Shiro tried not to look anywhere but at the cloth, not letting his gaze drift to Keith’s closed eyes or the line of blood that had started to dribble out from between his lips at some point. Krolia, in the meantime, had taken up a towel and one of the water bowls and begun cleaning away the dried blood staining his chest, revealing the gashes that were the source of bleeding and providing them an unobstructed view of the many bruises across his abdomen.

Coran said something, and Shiro blinked wearily at him before shaking his head and asking, “What?”

“I said, has he been having any trouble breathing?” Coran repeated. He had now moved away from the shoulder to instead prod inquisitively at Keith’s battered ribcage.

“I - no, I, um, I don’t think so,” Shiro answered.

“That’s good,” said Coran. “A few of these ribs are likely broken, but it doesn’t seem a lung has been punctured. How long has he been unconscious?”

“Since just before we got on Green.”

“And he was conscious before that?”

“He was out for about two doboshes but he came back around for a while. He was delirious, though.”

“Hm.” Coran frowned deeply in thought. “Well, the fact that he was able to regain consciousness before is still good news. Krolia, pass me the white bag on the tray behind you, these are going to need stitches,” he added, fingers brushing against a gash at Keith’s side.

Krolia obliged, passing Coran a bag from which he pulled out a set of needles and a silvery thread. “Hold him steady for me, you two,” he said as he readied the needle. “It’s precision work.”

“Wait, aren’t you going to give him any sort of, like, anesthesia?” Shiro asked. “Something to numb him?”

Coran shook his head. “With the pods, I never needed to figure out what sort of dosages to give a half-human half-Galra to effectively put him under without overdosing him. It’d be too risky to try now without the guidelines in place. Besides, it shouldn’t matter much here. He’s unconscious anyway, and the needle doesn’t hurt near as much as these wounds will if we don’t close them up before we risk infection. Allura will hopefully be able to help with pain relief once she gets back, but for now… Sorry.”

Shiro sighed. “No, don’t - don’t be sorry, it’s all right.” He moved his hand from the cloth on Keith’s head to his shoulder, where he pressed down to hold him in place. Krolia had taken his other arm, at the forearm since the shoulder was swollen and out of place, and had one hand at Keith’s waist, and Coran moved in to start sewing up the gashes. Shiro winced as the needle pierced Keith’s skin, but kept watching as Coran laced it through.

At the third stitch, Keith finally seemed to react, squirming slightly under Shiro and Krolia’s grips, his brow furrowing. When Coran moved to another gash on his chest, he began letting out the tiniest hints of a whine with every few stabs of the needle. Shiro shushed him under his breath, trying his best to be soothing. He needed another arm, wanted another hand to comb his fingers consoling through Keith’s hair and wipe away the sweat on his pale face while his other arm was occupied holding him down for Coran.

“All right,” Coran said when he’d finished with the stitches and set the needle aside. “How’s his head wound holding up, Shiro?”

“It, uh, it looks - it doesn’t look any worse,” Shiro said slowly.

“How’s the bleeding?”

“Slowed.”

“Good, good.” He took a breath and moved back to Keith’s shoulder. “What exactly happened here? Pidge said it was an explosion that hurt him, I’ll assume the bone broke at the landing, but - ” He looked up at Shiro. “There’s some twisting of the joint here, like he was still trying to swing his arm around after it had broken.”

Shiro could physically sense the blood draining from his face as he swallowed down nausea, thinking back to the base. To the way he’d had to pull Keith’s arm around to the scanner after unevenly dragging him across the garage with his one arm. “Is - is that - what does that mean for him?”

“Just that it’s going to be that much more difficult to reset the bone,” Coran answered, moving around the bed to ready his hand between Keith’s shoulder and neck. “Krolia, if you’ll take the bicep there. Shiro - ”

“Wait, Coran, I don’t know if I - ”

“Allura’s on her way,” Pidge’s voice interrupted, and Shiro turned to see her standing in the doorway, looking out of breath. “She just radioed into the bridge. The Red Lion and Blue Lion will be landing soon.”

“I’ll go meet her,” Shiro said hastily, practically jumping back from Keith’s bed. “I’ll bring her over. Thanks, Pidge.”

“Um, you’re welcome,” Pidge said, although Shiro was already out the door.

He half-ran to the hangar, the halls rushing dizzily past him, and when he reached it the Blue Lion had already landed, and Red was following close behind. Allura wasted no time hurrying down from Blue’s mouth. “Shiro!” she called when she spotted him, her eyes widening as she approached him. “You’re hurt too?!”

“No, no,” Shiro said. “It’s not my blood, I’m fine.”

“Not the blood, the bruise. On your head.”

“On my - ” With a frown Shiro raised his hand, finding a tender spot near his temple. Well, he  _had_  been knocked out for a hot second, he remembered now. It must have knocked against his helmet when he’d been thrown by the explosion. Well, no matter, it was unimportant now. “It’s just a bruise,” he said. “Keith’s the one who’s hurt. Coran and Krolia have him in the infirmary, they need you there.”

“What happened?” asked Matt. Red had made her landing, and Matt was now making his way out of the cockpit, Lance following close behind him.

Shiro grit his teeth. He didn’t have time to answer any more questions now. He had to get Allura to Keith. So, without bothering to reply to Matt, he took the princess by the hand and began pulling her along as he raced back to the infirmary. Pidge jumped aside from her place watching through the partly opened door as Shiro practically shoved Allura through and Coran gestured her over to the bed. Shiro hesitated at the door before pulling it shut.

“You’re not going in?” Pidge asked.

“It’d be too crowded in there,” Shiro answered. “How is - how’s he doing?”

“I think they set the broken bone,” Pidge said. “He let out a hell of a yell a minute ago. You okay?”

Shiro nod mutely and leaned against the wall, sliding down it until he reached the floor and resting his arms across his knees, then dropping his forehead on top. He was glad, in a distressingly selfish sort of way, that he hadn’t been around to set that bone. Regardless of the fact that it was to help Keith, to heal him, he didn’t think he would have been able to stand watching his little brother be in any more pain at his hand. He’d had enough of that today already.

“Shiro?”

Shiro glanced up to see that Matt had joined them in the hallway. His face was creased with worry and he held his hand awkwardly at his side, as if he were debating whether to reach out to Shiro or keep the distance. “You all right?” he asked. Shiro nodded. “What, uh, what happened? Coran had radioed Allura, Pidge had said something about some sort of explosion?”

“It was the building,” Pidge answered him. “The electrical system was really badly maintained, and after this long it wasn’t ready to handle any energy uses besides keeping the lights and air the way it has for the last few thousand years. When we started using the computers and doors, we wound up with power surges, and the place was really structurally unsound. Whole thing was looking for an excuse to blow.”

“So that’s what took Keith out?” Matt asked, peering toward the door.

“Yeah, it was - ”

“It was my fault,” Shiro said softly.

There was a pause of silence, and without looking Shiro could tell that Pidge and Matt were staring at each other, having one of their telepathic sibling conversations.

“Shiro,” Pidge said slowly. “You had to move him around to get his hand on the scanner. It’s not your fault that - ”

“Not that,” Shiro said. “The explosion.”

“Keith was the one who overloaded the door security when I warned him not to.”

“He only did that because he was desperate. He was trying to find the quickest way out. Because he was scared. Because of me.”

“Shiro - ” Matt started.

Abruptly Shiro got to his feet. “I’m - I’m going to go to my room. I just have to - I have to rest my head. It’s - I can’t - ” He took a deep breath. “It was too soon. I shouldn’t have gone on a mission with him, not yet.”

“I know,” Matt said softly. “I know, and I’m sorry, Shiro. I shouldn’t have pushed it.”

“Me neither,” Pidge mumbled, eyes on her feet.

Shiro swallowed, opened his mouth to say, “that’s all right,” or “it’s okay,” or “you were only trying to help.” But instead all he could say was, “Let me know if there are any big changes,” before he turned and left down the hall and didn’t look back.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to yell at me over on [my tumblr](https://justheretobreakthings.tumblr.com).


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